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by Path



Series: Barizhan Rim [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Crossover, Gen, M/M, Platonic Life Partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 08:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6110410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Telimezh tries to recover after the disaster that shattered his life and left him without his drift partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> More for the TGE + mecha thread, since a lot of people were asking about Dazhis..

Telimezh works sporadically. Temp positions, sitting jobs, nothing a man with a shattered leg and life shouldn’t be able to manage. He doesn’t keep jobs well though; eventually he _remembers_ at work, and the screaming or shaking silence or unrequested absence is too much for his temporary boss, and that’s the end of it. _So much for the veterans of the Kaiju War,_ he thinks. _The only ones they’ve got money to support are the ones still fighting it._

His doctor tells him his leg isn’t shattered, but Telimezh knows she’s wrong. She sees him twice a week now, down from every day, and wraps her warm hands around his knee to subtly maneuver the bones. “The only strain is from the way you’re holding it,” she said early on. “If your x-rays are to be believed, you’ve never so much as sprained it. Try to walk normally, and if you use the cane, at least try not to lean into it too much.” But Telimezh knows it is shattered. He feels it in every step, and when he lies awake at night, it aches brutally.

He’s doing light guard work- security, really, for a mall that doesn’t need it, when the shakes hit him. He is _there _again, strapped into Lancer Magi’s conn pod with Dazhis before him, and he can feel the water close over his head. They find him in a corner, white-faced and clutching his knee, and call his doctor. He is nearly sent to a hospital, but Telimezh manages to seize enough mind to beg them not to, and they settle for the doctor’s card in his wallet. By the time she comes, they’ve put him in the office with his coat around him and gone back to work.__

__By the time she comes, it’s already over. Dazhis is dead and Telimezh is broken and they may as well have told him today that he won’t be on the schedule again. He rubs his thigh, agitated, but it does nothing for the deep, residual ache. She greets him as if the world weren’t ending and checks his knee without having to look directly at it. Her hands are warm through his slacks, pressing to his knee and soothing the ever-present ache._ _

__“Sorry,” he manages, as unsteady as his words after the attacks always are, “sorry. You shouldn’t have come.”_ _

__“Well, we’re here now,” she says calmly. “Do you think you can walk? I’ll take you home.” Telimezh is sure of no such thing, but lets her help him to his feet and walk him unsteady and slow back to her truck._ _

__“PTSD’s a bitch,” she says, driving. “Jaeger program isn’t making it any easier, either.” Her truck is full of stuff- a big duffle bag in the back, a rack of ancient CDs (as if they’ve made cars that play those in the last 20 years), a carton of half-eaten take-out. It is all eminently lived-in. She didn’t have to clear off the passenger seat, though. When he grunts noncommitally, she keeps talking, as cool and thoughtful as if he weren’t there. “Some times I think it’s for the best I didn’t get one.”_ _

__“You pilot?” he asks, and then mentally smacks himself. If she did, she wouldn’t be picking up patients at 1 in the morning and driving them home._ _

__“Graduated the Ranger program and everything,” she says. “Couldn’t find a copilot, though. Happens. Drift compatibility, hard to predict.”_ _

__“I’m sorry,” he says automatically._ _

__She shrugs. “Lots to do still. Can’t stop living just because I missed out. Besides, who’d drive poor ex-pilots around in the middle of the night if I weren’t around?”_ _

__He nearly bristles at the idea of being an ex-pilot, before he reminds himself. Then it comes at him in a wave again and he is submerged as surely as he was in the sea. He is shaking badly when he comes to, and his doctor has pulled the truck off to the side of the road. Her hand is on his back, circling gently; he can feel the heat through his jacket. She’s talking, a story about the clinic she works at, totally unrelated. It distracts him from the replay, feeling massive teeth sink into his knee and wrenching his entire body out the hole in the conn pod... In time, the tension eases back out of his shoulders, and the iron bands around his heart relax enough to let him breathe._ _

__She pulls the truck back out again. When they pull into the driveway of the slummy place he’s living, she eases a hand under his shoulder to help him out of the car and helps him to the door, even though she doesn’t think his knee is busted. She waits while he gets the keys into the lock._ _

__“D’you,” he hazards, “d’you want to come in?”_ _

__“Nah,” she says. “See you tomorrow for your thing, Telimezh.”_ _

__“See you, doc,” he says._ _

__“Kiru,” she corrects. “Call me Kiru.”_ _


	2. Chapter 2

He sees her the next day for his thing. She eases the stress in his knee with strong fingers, then asks him what he’s taking for the pain. He still has some of what they gave him when they pulled him out, but he’s been trying to ration it. “That’s way more than you should need, for what seems to be wrong,” she says. “Try to scale down to an ibuprofen or naproxen.”

He doesn’t bother to fight her on it. “Alright,” he says.

“It’s not broken,” she says, as if his passive acceptance irks her. “It’s not broken, Telimezh.”

“Right,” he agrees.

She takes his shoulders in his hands like she means to shake him. “If we could get you past this, it would be so much easier for you, is all,” she says. She sounds like she’s trying to restrain herself from a bigger outburst. “You get hung up on your knee and there’s nothing wrong with it. We should be-” She cuts herself off and withdraws to check a box or two on her tablet.

“We should be what?” Telimezh asks. 

She doesn’t want to say it, but she does, and more tumbles out her mouth as she starts. “We should be focusing on your rehabilitation. You’re an able-bodied pilot, if you would believe it, and there’s fewer of those every day. I wish we had the leisure of letting you go, but they want you back in one piece, because Lancer Magi is waiting and they don’t have anyone who won’t have to train from the ground up to pilot it. It’s _war_ , Telimezh,” she says, slapping her tablet down, “and who knows? You really might be the last chance we get. They need you.”

He has never heard her say so many words at one time. If he weren’t shaking from what they were, he’d have been astonished. “I can’t,” he says, amazed he can talk at all. He is reminded that she is not some family physician, but a doctor serving the EBDC, and a Ranger herself, if an unfielded one. He should not expect patience from her.

“I know,” she says. “Are you even seeing a psychiatrist, or have they trusted that to me, too?” He doesn’t need to tell her. “Of course. They neglected to mention I’d be responsible for all your care. I should be focusing on other problems, then. The knee is,” she pauses, clearly trying to be tactful at last, “minor.”

Seeing a psychiatrist, or whatever the Corps was using as one, was about the last thing Telimezh wants. He recalls something in her long speech- “Magi isn’t really waiting for me,” he points out. “It was destroyed when Nazhamor attacked.” His voice barely trembles at all.

“Fulmino Deputy got there quickly,” Kiru says. “It was in bad shape, but it’s been nearly a year. Building an arm, leg, and head doesn’t take as long as you’d believe. I thought…” she trails off, rummaging in a cabinet. “I thought we might be able to talk about it.”

“No,” says Telimezh, before he realizes he’s spoken. It’s rude, he realizes, but he doesn’t try to mediate the harshness of his response.

“Well, to be true, I thought you could show me,” she says, and she pulls a pons headset out of the cupboard.

There’s all kinds of reasons no- not least of all that Telimezh don’t want to- but he focuses on the one that comes to mind quickest. “You can’t drift,” he says, unforgivably tactless.

“Hm,” says Kiru too quickly. “You’re right, better not try.” She throws the set over her shoulder into the wastepaper basket with no regard for delicate machinery. “So how’s the knee?”

“I can’t,” he says, still explaining. “I can’t drift again, doc. Kiru.”

“Can’t?”

He ignores the bait and glares at her. Kiru regroups quickly from her failed advance. “Of course you know why there are always two pilots,” she says.

“Two to share the neural load,” Telimezh answers automatically.

“I can share it,” she says. “Have you told anyone what happened to you out there?”

He shakes his head. Bitterness, regret, betrayal, all welling up inside him, make talking rough.

“You must,” she says, and her voice is laced with pity.

He is crying, he realizes, and that is abruptly enough. He holds his hand out, unable to stop it shaking. Kiru takes a second pons headpiece out of the cupboard and gives him that, fetching the other for herself out of the wastepaper basket. He doesn’t even know what to do with it; in his drivesuit, the entire thing is automatic and disguised in the helmet, but Kiru helps him, positioning it and engaging the clamps. She is in hers before he knows it, and he wonders through the despair if she has practiced, partnerless, putting it on. 

She sits to his left, pulling up another battered chair, and places her hand over his where he grips the arm of the chair as if she has said she will torture him. “Let me share this,” she says. She is as pitying as she is ruthless. “Let me take half.” Then, with her other hand, she slams the button.


	3. Chapter 3

_(Your brothers teach you to kneecap, to elbow, to bite and fight dirty. They are not easy on you and you are not easy on them. Techet especially is hardest on you, closest to your age, the two of you often mistaken for twins. He breaks your collarbone in a wrestling match and your mother forbids them all from teaching you further. You are a girl; girls do not fight. You have to go further afield for teachers, and make sure none give you a shiner to take home, lest your mother discover.)_

You are sparring in the Ranger training courtyard, an endless series of matches between endless candidates, subbing in one after another to test the nebulous compatibility. You have felt nothing particular so far, but you are sure it exists, the perfect partner. Even your sisters call you a romantic, and other cadets use less flattering terms, but you have hope. You would not have set your heart on him, with his sharp nose and severe cheekbones, the line of his long braid white down his back. But despite his appearance, which is too clean and crisp for him to have fought many matches, he gives you a fight so vicious and demanding that you are pushed utterly to your limits. He takes you down with a blow to the back of the neck and you nearly black out. “That’s what it looks like, ladies and gentlemen!” cries one of the officers, and the two of you are shepherded to the next stage.

_(You never stop sparring, watching pairs leaving and the rest of you slowly thinning out. They cannot find one for you. You’re not the only one, but you’re the only one this good, still left behind. You put your quarterstaff up on the wall, and wait for them to call you for the next match.)_

He challenges you in a way you can’t put words to. You follow him around the jaeger bay- you walk together, a visible team, but he leads. You do not mind- in fact, you are relieved, pleased. You never liked setting the road, only walking it as directed. Despite repeated test drifts, you never feel as though you know him entirely, which draws you to him. He is somehow a mystery, something unique among the field of Rangers; you are fascinated. You follow in Dazhis’ lead and you are proud to stand beside him. You feel a yank of compulsion thinking it, as if there is something else you must do, but you cannot help but watch him and follow now as you followed then.

_(You had already been practicing through a city clinic when the first event happened, though you left to file through the Ranger program. They take you as a doctor when they give up on finding you a partner, and you see pilot after pilot thrown in your face. They are careless, proud, often brutally wounded, nearly always accompanied by their partner hovering in concern. You cannot save this one, though you work yourself to the bone trying. No kaiju needed; she was crushed in a mechanical failure that never left the bay. You collapse once she is gone and watch numbly as her drift pilot stumbles away in shock. You think, they’ll call for compatibility tests in a few weeks, and you berate yourself for the heartlessness.)_

You are rigged into Lancer Magi, your first time in the field. You have both tested well, at an easily passable 80% drift- not the best, but good enough for the jaeger. You are humming with adrenaline and the delirious feeling of being hooked into Dazhis’ memories. You get out in front of Nazhamor before Dazhis strikes, before he pulls himself from the rig and disables Magi’s entire left half. You struggle, you cry to him, but the barrage of images from his suddenly open mind nearly incapacitates you. He is still hooked into the pons despite it all, and now you see the rest of him as if it were you. You are the one the cult leader approaches, all smiles and understanding. He knows the horror of war; he tells you how to begin to end it. You want something to believe in. He teaches you concealment, how to shield your mind, he runs you through your own training gamut outside the strain of the Rangers. It has led to this; it has all led to this-

 _(Telimezh, you say. Telimezh. You are also standing in Magi’s conn pod, despite the close quarters. You are in your scrubs and sneakers, feeling utterly exposed surrounded by stripped metal and moving machinery. Telimezh is in his rig, screaming to the man you never met, who is also your own partner. You know him and find him entrancing, curious, erudite. You shared his quarters and his bed and his betrayal. No, no, you are_ Kiru _, not Telimezh, despite joined brains and hearts, and he has chased the rabbit and is trapped reliving. Telimezh, you shout at him, but he does not know you’re there.)_

It is vast in the ocean before you, the size of Magi and more, tipped in limbs of endless seeking mouths, wriggling heads like the hydra. Dazhis is calling to it. “Great One, hear me,” he cries. “Great One, see me!” It is nearly on you and you cannot move, and the Marshall is screaming through the line trying to get Dazhis back in control, but he doesn’t see it, he doesn’t understand. Dazhis is silhouetted against the visor, roiling teeth and mouths grappling with the window. “Great One, take me!” he shouts, and the visor is pried away. It is on him immediately, seizing him by the leg and shattering bones, and thanks to the pons he wears, you feel it all. He thought this would be glorious. He screams, “NO WAIT-” before he is yanked through the open hole; his voice mangles and is gone.

_(Telimezh twitches and pulls at the restraints buckling him into the rig; he sags as if he is unconscious and he favours one side. You are beside him, where Dazhis should have been. You keep saying his name, needing to pull him out of it. It has all already happened, you remind yourself, but though you know it, your heart cannot stand it. You pull at his restraints and try to help him out of the locking, and you take his white face in your hands and tell him he must get out, but he does not see you…)_

And finally you wrench yourself back to action, for if you wait Nazhamor will devour you too, and you scrabble at the helmet with its useless pons, pull yourself out of the rig, and limp to the back of the pod. Why are there so many hatches to ensure you can’t pull this lever accidentally? You need it now... Finally the eject rips you from Magi. A brief, breathtaking plummet through the air; you can see the endless mouths tearing your beautiful jaeger apart, and then you hit the water. Breath is denied you. Your leg screams from pain. You cannot keep afloat, and sink beneath the surface. But you hear your name over the devastation- Telimezh! Telimezh!- and you think, they are looking for me.


	4. Chapter 4

Telimezh floats slowly to the surface. He is warm, not shaking, which is sort of surprising. He touches his head awkwardly before realizing the pons is gone, but Kiru is still here. She is holding him- they are both on the floor now- and he is sprawled out and Kiru is sitting against her desk and holding him close. Her face is wet with tears, and he dumbly reaches up to touch her cheek before realizing that he, too, has been weeping.

“A _kaiji cultist_ ,” she says, and she is merely incredulous. Telimezh has overheard others speaking of Dazhis, though his terrible betrayal was kept as quiet as possible, but none have been anything but disgusted. “How on earth did he shield himself from- from you for so long?”

Her eyes are puffy and red. Kiru is not pretty when she cries. He is sure he looks miserable himself. “They said he-” he breaks to clear his throat. “He trained. I mean. You know. They told me he _compartmentalized_. We drifted, but...”

“But you never got all of him,” she finishes. “The ten or twenty percent you could never get.”

He doesn’t see any reason to keep it quiet, now. She’s seen it herself. “And now they hate him. Except the Marshall, I think, he came to speak to me after. But they all…”

“Don’t you?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says. “Of course I do.”

“But they don’t remember him the way you do.”

“No,” he answers. “Of course they don’t.”

He realizes they’ve fallen silent, and he’s been staring up into her eyes a long time. Some distant part of himself asks, are they supposed to kiss now? But it cannot gain traction, and he thinks he probably does not want to. Just because Dazhis-

Her arms tighten around him almost before the shake hits him, and he merely curls into her and waits for it to pass. When it slows and stops, Kiru eases herself out from under him and stands, taking a long moment to get herself stable. Then she gives him both hands to help him up. She is strong, he realizes, despite her small frame, extraordinarily tough. She roots through the cupboard for a towel, scrubs her face with it, and throws it to him. He catches it without thinking.

“Let’s get something to eat,” she says. “And get on with it.”

She shrugs under his bad side as they walk out of her office together, but he tries not to favour the leg.


End file.
